


Golden-22

by OnigamiNanashi



Category: Golden Boy (TV), NYC 22
Genre: M/M, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 05:38:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnigamiNanashi/pseuds/OnigamiNanashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parts of a whole</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden-22

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sly_fck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sly_fck/gifts).



> I wrote this via text message, over two weeks or so for sly_fck, as she was one of approximately two people who got both fandoms. This is both for her, and her fault.

Because there are some days that he can’t stay in his apartment while his sister is there, drugged out of her goddamned mind. So he goes to this little bar far enough away he can’t justify going back to make sure she’s still breathing. It’s not a cop bar, it’s not a biker bar or anything, it just is. A dark little den with strong drinks and weak conversation.

Color him fucking surprised when another cop eases in the door. He keeps half an eye on the guy who takes three fingers of the best scotch (which isn’t all that great) and does more staring than drinking.

Clark doesn’t talk to him the first time, or the second, or the fifth. But the seventh night they end up in their strange silent tableau the tv behind the bar’s playing the press conference about the escaped felon who took out two cops before he was re-apprehended and the other cop’s looking beat to shit and fragile around the edges.

“The fuck happened to you?” Clark blurts before he can help it, before he can drag the words back like he has since the second time.

The other guy shrugs, winces, and shrugs again. “Didn’t do my job.”

His voice sounds like a wood shredder, and as he shifts, Clark can see his face isn’t much better off.

“That was yours, then,” Clark nods at the tv and watches the other guy’s fingers tighten on his glass.

“Do I have it stamped on my forehead or something?”

“Well. Actually.” Clark uses his own glass to gesture towards his face. “Kinda.”

He gets a tired smirk for his trouble. “How’d you guess?”

“Cop.” Clark identifies himself and the other and yeah, okay, they kinda have a prescence.

“McLaren.”

“Clark.”

The next time they don’t leave the bar, or the next, or the time after, but as McLaren’s face and throat heal, they’re on speaking terms. And not necessarily just on the bad days either. Clark’s about two centimeters from a concussion when he falls off his bar stool laughing when McLaren tells him about the alligator in the apartment. McLaren looks grudgingly amused leaning over him as he tries to catch his breath.

The time after that, Clark finds McLaren holed up in a booth.

It’s not a thing.

Even after Agnes gets clean and stays that way for more than a week, Clark still finds himself at the bar, in the booth that may as well have a permanent ‘reserved’ sign on it. Sometimes it’ll be a week between times the both of them are there. Sometimes it’s a week in a row.

The first time they meet outside of the bar, McLaren’s drugged up to his eyeballs and trying to fight the nurse working to change his IV. Clark neatly sidesteps a flailing arm and pins it as gently as he knows how.

McLaren whines high in the back of his throat and Clark’s got one hand carding through his hair before he knows what he’s doing. He wishes it was like he does for Agnes, but that’s not it at all. The nurse gives him a grateful smile and leaves.

Clark retreats to the chair next to the bed and waits. Theoretically, he knows how this part goes. He’s done his share of waiting rooms with the rest of the off-duty cops. But he’s never been in the room, and somehow that changes everything.

They don’t talk about it, when McLaren wakes up and his fingers are threaded tight around Clark’s. They don’t talk about it, how Clark squeezed real tight before letting go and scrubbing the sleep from his face. They don’t really talk about it, how McLaren sends everybody home once he’s released, except for Clark.

They definitely don’t talk about it, how Clark falls asleep in McLaren’s bed at the end of the day after his careful fingers change the gauze and tape covering both ends of the bullet’s path through flesh and muscle.

They don’t talk about it, but Clark has to go to work while McLaren has to figure out how to wash his hair when he can’t raise both arms up over his head.

Clark goes to work, and he comes back, and he goes to work again only this time when he comes back (back home, but they don’t talk about it) he’s got a laundry basket of work clothes and bags full of groceries.

When Clark finally goes to his apartment for more than just a couple minutes, Agnes corners him and eyes him for a minute.

“Who’s the chick you’re shacking up with? You’re never home, you smile once in awhile, you must be getting laid on the regular.”

“There is no chick.” Clark packs more clothes, hand skating over the old shirts he likes to sleep in. McLaren’s old shirts are better.

“I can’t even tell that’s a lie. Impressive. Look, I’m just glad you’re happy, okay?”

They almost talk about it when Clark gets sent home early one day after he loses a jumper off the tenth floor balcony. Not technically his division, but he and Owen happened to be down the block and ended up first on scene.

“There’s something about working homicide and seeing dead bodies all the time, and something completely different about talking to the bodies before they’re dead and being the reason they’re on the sidewalk, life and blood drained.” Clark slurs over McLaren’s (their) kitchen table. He’d walked in on McLaren standing in the kitchen wearing a pair of threadbare boxers and an ancient tshirt. Clark had made it as far as the sofa before his knees gave out and his forward momentum failed him.

He pitched sideways, feet still flat on the ground and stared at whatever the tv was playing- Giants/Padres game, really? McLaren knelt in front of him, whatever he saw had him easing the cell phone from Clark’s deathgrip.

McLaren untied and slid Clark’s shoes off, fingers wrapping around his ankles, warm and comforting, before he tugged both socks off. Clark opened his mouth to take a breath, but words tumbled out instead, about the girl, the brief negotiations, the fall, the aftermath.

Throughout the entire story, McLaren continued to strip Clark of his clothes, and with them, his defenses. Once Clark was down to his boxers and a wifebeather, McLaren left long enough to throw together a sandwich and force food down Clark’s throat.

Once McLaren had left to use the john though, Clark hit the whiskey. McLaren tried to pry it away before things got too bad, but Clark wasn’t having any of it, and ended up slumped over the kitchen table talking about how the girl looked falling through the air.

“Like she was so peaceful for the first time. Like it was all okay.”

Clark cries and McLaren puts him to bed.

“Nobody else would get this, or put up with it.”

McLaren’s eyes soften. “Yeah, I know. You’re not going to be a mess forever.”

He reaches out and tries to pat McLaren’s cheek but either misjudges the distance or how soft McLaren’s cheek is, and ends up leaving his hand where it is, cupping his face.

McLaren wraps a hand around Clark’s wrist. “Find me tomorrow, but not tonight.” He presses a dry kiss to Clark’s forehead and moves to the other side of the bed.

Clark doesn’t find McLaren the next day, or the day after that, but does a Friday after, once McLaren goes back to desk duty and comes home tired and hurting.

Clark glances up as McLaren steps through the door and meets him halfway through the living room with a glass of water and a Vicodin. McLaren frowns and Clark reaches up, tracing the pain lines that gathered between McLaren’s eyebrows.

“You looked like for two weeks after you come home,” Clark offers instead of waiting for McLaren to fess up. So, he swallows the pill and the water, dumps the glass on the sofa, grips Clark’s chin between index and middle fingers and brings him in for a kiss.

It’s nothing like Clark ever thought it would be, soft and chaste and almost sweet, if they were sweet men.

They bang.

Technically, it’s a night of passionate love-making, but they are not those kinds of dudes.

Whatever, Clark knows what it’s like to have McLaren come in his mouth and his ass, he doesn’t give a fuck what they call it. McLaren lays naked on top of Clark, tracing fingers through the fine hairs on his bicep.

When Owen finds out, it's not entirely unexpected. Occasionally, he can't make enough excuses to get out of having drinks after shift with his partner, that's what partners are for, right? And so occasionally, that necessitates calls to their significant others explaining why they'll be late. Clark has a sneaking suspicion his calls go better than Owen's, but that's not really the point here.

Clark finishes his call, and turns to find Owen creepily in his space behind him. "You should bring your girlfriend some time, let her meet the wife and they can bitch about the awful hours, the awful pay, basically everything about what we do."

Clark says he'll think about it, see what their schedules are like and spends an uncomfortable couple of hours drinking and wondering if Owen was the type of cop who'd ignore a backup request if his partner was queer.

He shouts the question to McLaren one morning as they're getting ready to leave. McLaren sticks his head back through the door, shirt fisted in his hands.

"Should you tell your partner? Not really my call to make."

Clark flips him off for being useless and goes back to tying his tie.

McLaren puts the tie to good use before Clark leaves, wrapping it around his fist and dragging him in for a deep kiss. Clark shoves him away after enough time he's going to be late and shoves his hand through his hair.

Eventually though, Clark can't put Owen off any longer without making him think they've broken up and as much as Clark's not sure, he's not going to deny McLaren's existence.

The next time Owen asks, over beers and greasy bar food, Clark takes a deep breath, nuts up and basically word vomits all over the table.

"I never wanted to double date with you and your wife because I can't bring a girl to bitch about us with your wife."

Owen laughs, eyes crinkling as he drains the last of his beer. "Couldn't find a girl to put up with your bullshit? I'd probably lie too."

Clark shifts, playing with his beer more than drinking it. "I don't... there's no girl." He emphasizes, because god forbid he'd actually have to say it out loud.

Owen knows, the rat bastard. "Hmmm?" he asks vaguely, "What?"

"Oh, fucking. I'm living with a guy. His name's Kenny McLaren. We assfuck sometimes, is that what you wanted to hear?" Clark stares at his hands, bravado gone.

Owen coughs into his hand. "That was a level of detail I never wanted."

It takes him a minute, but he sits forward abruptly. "You. Are you sleeping with Inspector McLaren's son?"

Clark rubs his hands over his face. "That's what you got from this conversation? His father?"

Owen shrugs, unconcerned. "Don't know much about the kid to comment on. Know his daddy though."

Clark shifts. "His daddy doesn't know, and it's not my secret to tell."

"I've known how to keep my mouth shut longer than you've been alive, junior." Owen brandishes his empty glass at Clark. "And on that note, I think the next round is on you."

At the end of the night, Owen gets McLaren's number while Clark's in the john, and Owen texts him when Clark's being an ass and doesn't really hope that McLaren will withhold sex but maybe thinks it anyway.

They end up going on that double date, only it's at Owen's house, and instead of bitching with Clark's girlfriend, Owen's wife decides the boys need adopting. They end up with a standing Sunday meal at the house, and Owen can't really say he minds. He puts on a good front, but the first time they eat dinner at midnight after a tough as shit day and Owen feels himself relax, he knows.


End file.
